Meta Is Testing a Paid Instagram Plan That Could Reveal Who Rewatches Your Stories

The social media giant is reportedly experimenting with new features through a paid subscription tier.

BY ANNABEL BURBA, EDITORIAL ASSISTANT @ANNIEBURBA

Illustration: Inc; Photo: Getty Images, Instagram

Meta is reportedly testing out a new Instagram subscription plan for consumers. The company seems to be trying to replicate competitor Snapchat’s success in using paid subscriptions to diversifying its revenue stream.

Instagram Plus provides subscribers with expanded access and insight into the social media platform’s stories function, which allows users to post photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours. Meta is currently piloting the plan in select markets, according to TechCrunch. 

Features include the ability to boost a story by making it appear more prominently on other users’ feeds, extend a story’s life beyond 24 hours, and create multiple different story audiences. (Instagram users can currently only post stories to either their public profile or their private “Close Friends” list.)

Those who subscribe to Instagram Plus will also be able to search the list of users that view a story rather than scrolling through it manually and see which users watch a story more than once. Plus, they’ll get the ability to react to other people’s stories with a new kind of notification called a “super heart.”

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Meta didn’t disclose pricing details to TechCrunch. But Instagram users from Mexico, Japan, and the Philippines have shared screenshots of the test run on social media that show the plan costs about $1 to $2 per month in their native currencies.

Snapchat rolled out its own subscription plan Snapchat+ to the U.S. and several other countries in 2022. It started at just $3.99 per month, but now offers a handful of pricing tiers that range from $2.25 to $13.49 per month. Snapchat+ offers many of the same features as Instagram Plus, including story boosts, story rewatch indicators, and custom story expiration settings. Snapchat, after all, pioneered the stories post format before Instagram added stories to its own platform in 2016.

Over the past three years, consumer subscriptions have become an important part of parent company Snap’s business model. In its fourth quarter 2025 earnings call, co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel said Snap’s subscribers have grown 71 percent year over year. A month later, the business reported reaching a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate thanks in large part to Snapchat+. The plan now has more than 25 million subscribers.

“What started as an early-access program for our most engaged Snapchatters has quickly scaled into a meaningful business—one that now represents a strong and growing revenue stream alongside our ads business,” the company said in a blog post.

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